A novel two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (2-DDWT) parallel architecture for higher throughput and lower energy consumption is proposed. The proposed architecture fully exploits full-page burst accesses of DRAM and minimizes the number of DRAM activate and precharge operations. Simulation results revealed that the architecture reduces the number of clock cycles for DRAM memory accesses as well as the DRAM power consumption with moderate cost of internal memory. Evaluation of the VLSI implementation of the architecture showed that the throughput of wavelet filtering was increased by parallelizing row filtering with a minimum area cost, thereby enabling DRAM full-page burst accesses to be exploited.

This paper clarifies the adequacy of the linear channel coding approach for the source coding with partial side information at the decoder. A sufficient condition for an ensemble of linear codes which achieves the Wyner's bound is given. Our result reveals that, by combining a good lossy code, an LDPC code ensemble gives a good code for source coding with partial side information at the decoder.

Introducing multi-agent (MA) technology into a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system can improve the serviceability and enhance maintenance-free operation with the inter-terminal parameter (ITP) method. In addition, the system's distributed intelligent field terminals (IFTs) use a common algorithm that is unaffected by any changes to the system specifications. As a result of these innovations, the proposed system has much better serviceability because it is much easier to make modifications compared to that of conventional systems. This system has been implemented for practical purposes at over 60 sites.

This paper studies two kinds of simple switched dynamical systems with piecewise constant characteristics. The first one is based on the single buck converter whose periodic/chaotic dynamics are analyzed precisely using the piecewise linear phase map. The second one is based on a paralleled system of the buck converters for lower voltages with higher current capabilities. Referring to the results of the single system, it is clarified that stable multi-phase synchronization is always possible by the proper use of the switching strategies and adjustment of the clock period. Presenting a simple test circuit, typical operations are confirmed experimentally.

In this letter, we propose a partial access mechanism to be used on a register file for low-cost embedded multimedia processor architecture. In the embedded system, supporting the SIMD operations is a burden because of the wide SIMD register file and its execution unit. So a new architecture is proposed to increase the performance of SIMD operations with minimal additional hardware overhead. To evaluate the performance and hardware overhead, this architecture is adopted to an embedded multimedia processor and simulated with five DSP benchmarks. The simulation results indicate that the performance is increased by 38% and the total area is increased by 13.4%. The proposed partial access mechanism may be useful for low-cost embedded multimedia ASIP.

H∞ optimal control is one of the most successful achievements in the post modern control theory. In the H∞ optimal control, we design a controller that minimizes the H∞ norm of a given system. Although the algorithms to solve the problem have already been reported, they focus on numerical systems (systems without any unknown parameters) and, can not be applied for parametric systems (systems with unknown parameters). Given a parametric system, this paper presents an algorithm to compute the optimal H∞ norm of the system achieved by an output feedback controller. The optimal H∞ norm is expressed as , where φ(k) denotes a root of a bivariate polynomial. A numerical example is given to show the effectiveness of the algorithm.

Cooperation can increase the system performance by obtaining the spatial diversity. While most of the present works concentrate on the analysis of the cooperation based on the inter-user channel response and developing a scheme for higher cooperative diversity, in this paper, we focus on practical resource allocation in OFDMA systems. Since the user who uses the same center frequency can not receive the signal when transmitting, this constraint should be considered to apply the cooperation to OFDMA systems. In this paper, we propose the pair-based OFDMA frame structure that overcomes this constraint. Also in this frame structure to achieve the minimum outage probability of system, we select the best partner among the candidate neighbors and allocate the suitable subchannels to bandwidth requested users through a cooperative subchannel allocation (CSA) algorithm. In order to evaluate the proposed resource allocation scheme, we carry out simulations based on IEEE 802.16e. The simulation results show that our proposed algorithm offers smaller outage probability than one based on non-cooperative communications and we get the minimum outage probability when a threshold for selection of candidate neighbors is 10 dB. We analyze that these results can be achieved by helping users located around the edge of the cell.

This letter proposes a new algorithm of refining the quantization parameter in H.264 real-time encoding. In the H.264 encoding, the quantization parameter computed according to the quadratic rate model is not accurate in meeting the target bit rate. In order to make the actual encoded bit rate closer to the target bit rate, ρ-domain rate model is introduced in our proposed quantization parameter refinement algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves obvious gain in PSNR and has stabler encoded bit rate compared to Jiang's algorithm.

We describe a statistical parametric speech synthesis system developed by a joint group from the Nagoya Institute of Technology (Nitech) and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) for the annual open evaluation of text-to-speech synthesis systems named Blizzard Challenge 2006. To improve our 2005 system (Nitech-HTS 2005), we investigated new features such as mel-generalized cepstrum-based line spectral pairs (MGC-LSPs), maximum likelihood linear transform (MLLT), and a full covariance global variance (GV) probability density function (pdf). A combination of mel-cepstral coefficients, MLLT, and full covariance GV pdf scored highest in subjective listening tests, and the 2006 system performed significantly better than the 2005 system. The Blizzard Challenge 2006 evaluations show that Nitech-NAIST-HTS 2006 is competitive even when working with relatively large speech databases.

Two dual-band bandpass filters (BPFs) based on the doubly parallel-coupled stepped impedance resonators (SIRs) structures have been proposed in this paper. The coupled-SIRs with/without open-stub-loads are introduced in the filter design. The dual-band filters exhibiting multiple zeros design operate at 2.45/5.2-GHz for the WLAN applications. Two three-staged filters composed of four SIRs have been proposed with the tapped-line adapted in the I/O sections. A five-staged filter is constructed based on the same design principle to achieve a better band-rejection. The proposed filters have the advantages of a much wider bandwidth in both the passbands without sacrificing the passband's insertion loss and passband flatness. The design procedure for a conventional parallel-coupled microstrip lines model is still suitable to design the proposed filters. The proposed filters have achieved almost twice the bandwidth of a conventional parallel-coupled lines configuration under the same design parameters. The experiments have been conducted to verify filter performance. Measured results are in good agreement with the full-wave simulation results.

A statistical model based on a partitioned Markov-chains model has previously been developed to represent time domain behavior of the asynchronous impulsive noise over a broadband power line communication (PLC) network. However, the estimation of its model parameters using the Simplex method can easily trap the final solution at a local optimum. This study proposes an estimation scheme based on the genetic algorithm (GA) to overcome this difficulty. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme yields estimates that more closely match the experimental data statistics.

We propose a new algorithm for the blind source separation (BSS) approach in which independent component analysis (ICA) and frequency subband beamforming interpolation are combined. The slow convergence of the optimization of the separation filters is a problem in ICA. Our approach to resolving this problem is based on the relationship between ICA and null beamforming (NBF). The proposed method consists of the following three parts: (I) a frequency subband selector part for learning ICA, (II) a frequency domain ICA part with direction-of-arrivals (DOA) estimation of sound sources, and (III) an interpolation part in which null beamforming constructed with the estimated DOA is used. The results of the signal separation experiments under a reverberant condition reveal that the convergence speed is superior to that of the conventional ICA-based BSS methods.

In this paper, a generalized Montgomery multiplication algorithm in GF(2m) using the Toeplitz matrix-vector representation is presented. The hardware architectures derived from this algorithm provide low-complexity bit-parallel systolic multipliers with trinomials and pentanomials. The results reveal that our proposed multipliers reduce the space complexity of approximately 15% compared with an existing systolic Montgomery multiplier for trinomials. Moreover, the proposed architectures have the features of regularity, modularity, and local interconnection. Accordingly, they are well suited to VLSI implementation.

A framework for generating facial expressions from emotional states in daily conversation is described. It provides a mapping between emotional states and facial expressions, where the former is represented by vectors with psychologically-defined abstract dimensions, and the latter is coded by the Facial Action Coding System. In order to obtain the mapping, parallel data with rated emotional states and facial expressions were collected for utterances of a female speaker, and a neural network was trained with the data. The effectiveness of proposed method is verified by a subjective evaluation test. As the result, the Mean Opinion Score with respect to the suitability of generated facial expression was 3.86 for the speaker, which was close to that of hand-made facial expressions.

Due to the computational complexity of the optimum maximum likelihood detector (OMD) growing exponentially with the number of users, suboptimum techniques have received significant attention. We have proposed the particle swarm optimization (PSO) for the multiuser detection (MUD) in asynchronous multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) system. The performance of PSO based MUD is near optimum, while its computational complexity is far less than OMD. Performance of PSO-MUD has also been shown to be better than that of genetic algorithm based MUD (GA-MUD) at practical SNR.

The computation involved in multiuser detection (MUD) for multicarrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) based on maximum likelihood (ML) principle grows exponentially with the number of users. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) with soft decisions has been proposed to mitigate this problem. The computational complexity of PSO, is comparable with genetic algorithm (GA), but is much less than the optimal ML detector and yet its performance is much better than GA.

HEMT comparators for ultrahigh-speed A/D converters have been investigated. In particular, the transition times of the D-latch used in the comparator have been analyzed by assuming a 0.1-µm HEMT technology. It is found that for small input signals (<0.1 V), the transition time from the track to latch phase dominates the comparator operation speed. As the input signal increases, this time decreases due to the positive feedback in the latch, and the comparator speed is limited by the transition time from the latch to track phase. The transition times of 20 ps have been estimated for the present comparator.

We developed a content delivery system using a partially reconfigurable FPGA to securely distribute digital content on the Internet. With partial reconfigurability of a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA, the system provides an innovative single-chip solution for protecting digital content. In the system, a partial circuit must be downloaded from a server to the client terminal to play content. Content will be played only when the downloaded circuit is correctly combined (=interlocked) with the circuit built in the terminal. Since each circuit has a unique I/O configuration, the downloaded circuit interlocks with the corresponding built-in circuit designed for a particular terminal. Thus, the interface of the circuit itself provides a novel authentication mechanism. This paper describes the detailed architecture of the system and clarify the feasibility and effectiveness of the system. In addition, we discuss a fail-safe mechanism and future work necessary for the practical application of the system.

Facial skin detection is an important step in facial surgical planning like as many other applications. There are many problems in facial skin detection. One of them is that the image features can be severely corrupted due to illumination, noise, and occlusion, where, shadows can cause numerous strong edges. Hence, in this paper, we present an automatic Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for facial skin color segmentation that uses knowledge of chromatic space and varying illumination conditions to correct and segment frontal and lateral facial color images, simultaneously. The proposed EM algorithm leads to a method that allows for more robust and accurate segmentation of facial images. The initialization of the model parameters is very important in convergence of algorithm. For this purpose, we use a method for robust parameter estimation of Gaussian mixture components. Also, we use an additional class, which includes all pixels not modeled explicitly by Gaussian with small variance, by a uniform probability density, and amending the EM algorithm appropriately, in order to obtain significantly better results. Experimental results on facial color images show that accurate estimates of the Gaussian mixture parameters are computed. Also, other results on images presenting a wide range of variations in lighting conditions, demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed color skin segmentation algorithm compared to conventional EM algorithm.

We fabricated the floating gate for silicon-on-insulator nonvolatile memory devices with In2O3 nano-particles embedded in polyimide insulator. Self-assembled In2O3 nano-particles were created by chemical reaction between the biphenyl dianhydride-p-phenylenediamine polymer precursor and indium films. The particles size and density of In2O3 nano-particles were 7 nm and 61011 cm-2, respectively. The current-voltage and retention time of fabricated device were characterized by using semiconductor parameter analyzer. A significant threshold voltage shift of fabricated nano-floating gate memory devices obtained, because of the charging effects of In2O3 nano-particles. And a memory window measured about 1 V at initial status.